The complainant requested information about the deployment of the British Indian Ocean Territory fishery protection/patrol vessel, the Pacific Marlin, over a specified period. He later made an associated request under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 asking what steps had been taken by the BIOT to disseminate environmental information such as that in his original request. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) advised it held no information in respect of either request and that the EIR do not apply to overseas territories. The FCO maintained that the government of the BIOT is constitutionally separate from the government of the United Kingdom and that any information about the deployment of the Pacific Marlin is held only by the government of the BIOT and not by the FCO. The Information Commissioner has investigated and accepts that the governments of the BIOT and the United Kingdom are constitutionally separate and that therefore any information held only by the BIOT would not be held by the FCO for the purposes of the EIR. However, he has also found that, in practice, the work of the government of the BIOT and the work of the FCO BIOT geographical desk are not always separated, and that the requested information for request 1 is held, at least to some extent, by the FCO itself. The FCO breached the EIR in its handling of the complainant’s requests. The Information Commissioner requires the public authority to provide the complainant with the information falling within the scope of request 1 detailed in the Schedule at Annex A, or issue a valid refusal notice indicating why it is exempt from disclosure.
Section of Act/EIR and Finding: EIR 5 – Complaint Upheld, EIR 14 – Complaint Upheld
[2012] UKICO FS50436500
Bailii
England and Wales
Information
Updated: 06 December 2021; Ref: scu.530007